Tear Me Up Inside
by Delenn
Summary: NEW:5-17-03Buffy POV about the events that happened before she finally realized who she was meant to be with. May only be PG-13


**Disclaimer: See, there's this god that walks around on earth, and this god, he owns 'em all. Bow down to the great Joss! Ya'know, 'cause I'm just a lowly fan who likes to sneak in and borrow the characters; Hey, I promised to return 'em, eventually.   
  
Author's Notes: What can I say; I have no idea where these story ideas come from. Not a midnight inspired fic, Yay!   
  
Summary: Buffy POV about the events that happened before she finally realized who she was meant to be with.   
  
Rated: R   
  
Date Started/Date Finished: May 7th, 2003/May 16th, 2003**   
  


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Tear Me Up Inside   
By Delenn

  
  
  
  
I always knew we were "meant to be," I knew that we'd sleep together, and I knew that we'd love each other. It never occurred to me what could happen between knowing that and it actually happening.   
  
By now, it's pointless to get into when I stopped hating him, when I started caring, and when I came to that striking realization. Besides, if I'll be honest with myself, it probably happened almost the moment he started becoming an everyday presence, but I was being the good girl with the normal boring boyfriend… someone who would never go for that kind of evil creature, who couldn't afford to again.   
  
Sometimes I wonder what the hell messed my head up so much; then I remember, oh yeah that would have been being dead. That has some lasting effects on a girl, you know? Being ripped out of heaven by your friends, well that's just the icing on the cake.   
  
I was survived in the end, figured it out. I always do, don't I? It's from training and slayer senses, I can save the world again and again but it took me a while to find true love. There were just some… things… I didn't count upon.   
  
Dying, well, let's just say that it took me a long time to realize just how crazy I was that first year, and I deserved it, I didn't want to come back, but he didn't.   
  
He didn't deserve to love me and have me insult him, use him and use his love for me then twist it up inside so that it was wrong and horrible. Where in that sentence did I forget if I was talking about him or me?   
  
Of course, what he did to me, there's no excuse, but there isn't much for what I did either. I abused him, used him… he tried to rape me. Wow, don't we sound like the dysfunctional couple of the century.   
  
I didn't understand what it meant to love somebody and I didn't understand how to handle the feelings I had. I was angry at the world and I took it out on him. I couldn't hit my friends so I hit him, and he let me. He probably should have left after I thought I killed that girl and he tried to stop me from turning myself in, but he didn't leave, and I didn't stop.   
  
Then there was Tara and Willow after her death. Tara was one of us, she was kind and sweet and her dying was like watching the last pure good thing I could see in this world leave.   
  
Nobody has any idea how hard it was for me, to get up there and fight my best friend for years, to know that one of us had to die and it was her or the world. To look at her and see the bruises I was leaving, it took awhile but eventually I related it to him also.   
  
I used to sit up at night and stare at the ceiling hoping that when I closed my eyes this time I wouldn't be here anymore. That I wouldn't see the beaten and pained faces of my loved ones in my sleep. Still, seeing him again was a fresh reminder of betrayal and for a long time after we were "meant to be," the dreams of what he did to me came back, of what I did to him.   
  
I no longer see myself as a killer, though I did for a long time, I've realized that I did what I had to, what nobody else would do, and maybe I made the wrong decisions sometimes, but at least I made them. Funny thing is, I don't see myself as much of anything anymore, and certainly not that hero my friends used to fancy me to be.   
  
Admittedly, I never understood why I played their game when I came back, or why I actually tried to stay their hero. I know though, it was for Dawnie, I tried so hard for her, never noticing the darkness eating me away.   
  
That girl I was then, I don't even remember being her; I look back on her in memories as though she were someone else, someone whose brain is alien to me. My goal was to survive back then, now I realize I'm dead and my goal is simply to function this day and make it to the next.   
  
We both died, the difference is she stayed dead and I came back. I had to live, I had to live to see my sister look at me with hatred, my best friends with indifference and pain, and to realize that Giles would betray me like all the other men in my life.   
  
Somehow I've gotten ahead of myself, did I forget that last big apocalypse? With Faith and the potentials, everyone telling me that I made the wrong decisions for seven years, even if I saved the world. That I lived for them to be a failure, that I wasn't good enough to save the world again.   
  
I did anyway, save the world, except I had no support, and in the end they all looked at me with blame for their mistakes. I didn't lead them well enough, so of course all that happened was my fault. And when we didn't all survive they blamed me again because I hadn't wanted to survive.   
  
Nowadays they are gone, but still they all sit around in my head and have battles over who will torture me with accusations when. Some friends, they won't even leave me alone inside my own head.   
  
Never mind all that, because you know, we were meant to be, and now we're together, so apparently my scars have just disappeared.   
  
Don't get me wrong, I love him with every fiber of my being and while he has hurt me, he hadn't left me like everyone else, I just don't have much of a being anymore. But that's okay with him because he went back there with me, lived in the hellmouth with me, fought with me, and he's not so whole inside anymore either.   
  
The rudeness of demons appearing around us and interrupting our quite moment by some of my friend's gravestones pulls me away from my thoughts.   
  
I catch his eyes with my own as I let his hand slip out of my grasp and I can't help but wonder if demons will ever learn. No demon has successfully taken over the world or sent it into fiery torment on our watch, and they've yet to kill us.   
  
True, we won't survive this apocalypse any better than the last, but we'll live, we'll continue on to the next day and the one after that. The world will be here for others to enjoy never knowing that every time it comes close to ending we lose another part of ourselves, another of our friends.   
  
Remember, because we were "meant to be," and for Spike and I, this is our happily ever after.   
  


The End


End file.
